Editorial: Congress doesn't have courage to change farm policy

Tuesday

May 27, 2008 at 12:01 AMMay 27, 2008 at 8:13 AM

It's not often these days that we find ourselves agreeing with George W. Bush. But the president was dead-on Wednesday when he attempted to kill a bloated piece of legislation called the Food and Energy Security Act, better known as the farm bill.

It's not often these days that we find ourselves agreeing with George W. Bush. But the president was dead-on Wednesday when he attempted to kill a bloated piece of legislation called the Food and Energy Security Act, better known as the farm bill.

Bush rightly criticized the way Uncle Sam's subsidies flow to wealthy farmers, those with adjusted gross incomes as high as $2.5 million. The president had asked Congress to cap income eligibility for farm program payments at $200,000 - still pretty high, when you consider that the median American household income is about $50,000. Alas, lawmakers couldn't bring themselves to go lower than $750,000.

Perhaps those congressional Republicans and some Democrats who last fall opposed expanding a children's health care program to include families at 400 percent of federal poverty level can now explain why a single farmer earning 7,200 percent of poverty level deserves taxpayer assistance. What a joke they are.

What's particularly galling is that farmers can get so-called direct payments even when times are great, as they are now. Indeed, analysts expect U.S. farm income to hit a record $92.3 billion this year because of strong demand and because biofuels are consuming a bigger piece of the pie. Direct payments aren't need-based assistance to protect America's food supply; they are what they are, which is a giveaway - welfare. Yet Congress left this provision largely intact.

Look, we understand that it's an election year, that lawmakers are eager to show they support The Great American Farmer. The ag lobby is a powerful one. In fairness, crop subsidies only make up about 14 percent of the $300 billion farm bill. But every time farm policy comes up, these subsidies are dissected under the national microscope and roundly criticized. Saner alternatives are proposed, many of them by farm groups themselves.

Then nothing really happens. Five years from now, we'll be having this same debate.

Meanwhile, food prices for consumers are higher than ever, while those same folks as taxpayers have to subsidize rich farmers. They're getting socked on both ends by this farm bill. Sorry if we're not sympathetic to that. Congress' one redeemable act was in shaving the tax credit for corn ethanol from 51 cents per gallon to 45 cents in order to incentivize fuel made from inedible cellulosic sources. No doubt the food-versus-fuel debate factored into that decision.

Unfortunately, it apparently factored into the decision to slash the amount of land eligible for Conservation Reserve Program, a vital initiative that protects America's sensitive waterways from runoff and erosion. Cutting eligibility by 7 million acres may allow for more crops in the ground, short-term, but long-term it's a lousy move for the environment.

Despite the House's botched attempt to override Bush's veto, it looks like both chambers of Congress have enough votes to ram their version through. Why is it so hard to create a system in which farmers get assistance only when they need it? We're tired of the argument that ag policy should move slowly, that the system can't handle too much change too soon. Congress has five years to craft the next farm bill. Better get started.